


A New Generation

by Telaryn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childbirth, Gen, Missions, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pregnancy, Slice of Life, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 01:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6065892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the birth of their first child approaching, Clint and Laura get a hard lesson in what their married life is really going to be like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Generation

**Author's Note:**

> This is essentially song-fic - I had an image of Clint singing 'Hush-a-Bye Mountain' from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to Cooper and had to run with it a bit.

_A gentle breeze from Hushabye Mountain…  
Softly blows o’er Lullaby Bay…  
It fills the sails of boats that are waiting…  
Waiting to sail your worries away…_

It was the song Clint would sing to himself, when he thought no one was listening – a promise of peaceful sleep with easy dreams, safe from all the horrors he’d known in his own childhood. Even though his voice was more Tony Bennett than Dick Van Dyke, Laura had always loved listening to him and had secretly looked forward to the day when he might sing it to their own son or daughter.

The first pregnancy had predated them even considering marriage – Clint wasn’t officially living with her in her tiny apartment in Astoria yet, although that changed soon after she miscarried.

The second time she got pregnant, they’d been married for just shy of a year. Laura had finished her master’s degree in agricultural sciences and been hired for a solid entry-level position at Gotham Greens. Clint was rising through the ranks at SHIELD; he was already considered their top sniper, even though numerous disciplinary and procedural concerns kept him from getting the official recognition he probably deserved.

Advancement at work put him in line for longer missions into dangerous territory though. Laura accepted his absences – they’d talked about the enforced separations before they’d gotten married and she’d fully understood what she was buying into. As her pregnancy advanced, she even managed to make her peace with the idea that she would have to take the bulk of the responsibility of raising this baby and any others that followed herself.

The only thing she asked was that he be present for the birth. The more she learned about labor and delivery, the more nervous she was about the possibility of going through it alone. Clint, Phil Coulson, hell – even Nick Fury promised her that they would move heaven and earth to make sure her husband was there at her side.

Of course nobody had told her she would need to get the consent of a Somali warlord determined to destabilize his corner of the world with a half-dozen nuclear warheads he’d acquired from a missing Soviet stockpile. “Six weeks – no more,” Coulson had promised them. “We’re only going to get one shot at this.”

“I get it,” Laura told Clint when they were getting ready for bed that night. “It’s part of what I signed up for, right?” She laughed, but it was shakier than she’d intended. “Besides – I’ve got to finish decorating the nursery. Six weeks will go like no time at all.”

The morning Clint left, she invited their next door neighbor over for a cup of coffee, and asked Mary if she would be Clint’s back-up coach. 

Just in case.

Laura tried to play the request off as ‘no big deal’ and a case of pregnancy nerves, but something in her eyes had convinced Mary to agree on the spot. She would later come to realize as six weeks became eight, then nine, then twelve, that the instincts that had urged her to take that precaution were the very same ones that made her perfectly suited for a life married to one Clint Francis Barton.

That wasn’t to say that Laura took SHIELD’s broken promise to her without a fight. Her persistent phone calls, emails and trips to the local base eventually won her a sit-down with Director Fury, where she learned that her husband wasn’t late…he was missing.

“I’m sorry,” Fury said, and through her anger and tears Laura was surprised to learn that she believed him. “I know it doesn’t help, but Coulson is tearing apart the region trying to find him. He’s brought us close to two international incidents so far.”

Laura was surprised to find that it did help, and she told the director so. “We’ll get him back Laura,” he said, coming around the desk and taking her hands in his. “Whatever it takes.”  
*********************************  
Her water broke the next afternoon, when she was trying to decide if the growling in her stomach was enough motivation to overcome her desire to stay on the couch until she put down roots. Mary was at her door in minutes, grabbing her bag and whisking her away to the hospital, where she settled in for the long, hard job of having a baby.

They let her walk at first – slow, trudging steps up and down the length of the halls, leaning on Mary for support, stopping for fifteen minutes every hour so they could check the baby’s vital signs on the fetal monitor strapped across her swollen belly.

“I think it would be easier if they could tell me how much longer this was going to be,” Laura admitted to her friend a little over four hours into the process. The two of them had made their way through all the small talk Laura had in her, leaving only grim truth in its wake.

Mary was quiet for the rest of the length of the hall. As they made their turn to head back the other direction she said quietly, “They’re going to start talking up induction.”

Laura paused a step, then forced herself to keep walking. “Did you hear something?” she asked, startled by the certainty.in her friend’s tone.

“Your contractions haven’t stabilized,” Mary admitted. “Labor’s not progressing the way it should with your water broken. They’re not going to want to wait for nature to take its course.”

Memory that Mary had been through this twice already bloomed in Laura’s thoughts, and she squeezed the other woman’s hand. “What should I do?”

Silence hung between them for almost a dozen trudging steps. “Listen to them,” Mary said finally. “You’ve already had one miscarriage. It’s not worth the risk.”

Not worth the risk of telling Clint she’d lost another one of their children. Laura belatedly realized she was crying when a tear splashed against the skin of her hand. “I can’t do this,” 

“That’s the thing about labor and delivery,” Mary said, with a bitter chuckle. “You don’t have a choice. The only way out of this is through.”

It was perversely steadying. Laura drew a deep breath, dashing away the tears with the back of her free hand. “Okay then. Let’s get through it.”  
******************************************  
Twelve hours under the influence of Pitocin, and whatever determination Laura had been holding onto was slipping through her fingers. She’d had what she thought were pretty normal Braxton Hicks contractions late in her pregnancy, although not nearly as many as some of the other women she talked to seemed to have had.

She’d been an idiot, and her body had full out lied to her. Contractions – real contractions – were an order of magnitude more difficult to cope with than anything she’d ever experienced. Worst of all they just kept coming, whether she was ready for them or not.

“Laura – Laura, look at me.” Struggling not to burst into tears at the all-too-familiar tightening of her abdomen, Laura did as she was told. “Time to breathe, honey. In, in, out.” She demonstrated and Laura followed as best she could. The pain swelled up through her body, threatening to explode outwards and drag her down once and for all, but she held on – trusting that the now-familiar Lamaze techniques would keep her going.

“There you go,” Mary said, her expression relaxing into a smile just as Laura felt her tortured body begin to relax. “One more down.”

 _How many to go?_ Laura couldn’t help wondering as she nodded, blinking away sweat. Mary registered her discomfort a moment later, scrabbling for a towel which she used to blot Laura’s forehead and take the sting out of her eyes.

They had anywhere from thirty seconds to a minute before the agony started all over again. “Mrs. Barton.” Her doctor stepped into view, drawing her attention from the rising dread. “There’s been no significant progression in nearly two hours. We need to consider a c-section.”

“Is the baby all right?” Even as she asked the question, Laura saw the answer in the other woman’s eyes. _Please God no._ The fear that had lurked behind every move she’d made since SHIELD had taken Clint away from her came roaring back to full and vivid life.

“For now,” her doctor said, but Laura’s exhausted brain was filling once again with images of loss, of having to bear the initial rush of grief on her own, followed by the weight of having to tell Clint what had happened.

“Yes,” she managed just as the next contraction began. “Do it. Whatever it takes.” The words were more sob than speech as she groped for Mary’s hand and struggled to breathe through the next round of agony.

“It’s going to be okay, Laura. It’s going to be okay.” Mary’s frank brown eyes and earnest expression anchored Laura in the moment. Nothing had changed. No matter what happened in the next several hours, her only way out of this was through.  
***********************  
 _It isn't far to Hushabye Mountain  
And your boat waits down by the quay  
The winds of night so softly are sighing  
Soon they will fly your troubles to the sea_

She cried for real at the first bite of the spinal block. The pinch, followed by a wave of fire into her already overtaxed body was more than she could take. “Breathe Laura,” Mary pleaded with her, gripping each of Laura’s hands in her own. “Ride it out. In…out…” Focusing on the simple rhythm helped Laura to calm her fear until the pain ebbed at last – replaced by a pressure in her lower body wrapped in a blissful numbness.

Her doctor touched her shoulder. “Better?” The woman’s expression over her surgical mask was still concerned, but kind.

Laura nodded again. “How’s the baby?”

“A fighter, just like you. Be easy – what I need from you now is to stay calm and tell us if anything changes – if you feel any genuine pain, or it gets hard to breathe, or if anything feels wrong.”

“Okay,” Laura said. She could do that. Free of the constant waves of pain threatening to drown her, she was starting to feel more like herself.

Craning her head, she sought out Mary. “Everything’s going to be okay.” She tried to make it more statement than question, but her friend wasn’t fooled.

“You did the right thing,” Mary said, her voice muffled by the surgical mask she was wearing.

 _Come out, little bird,_ Laura thought as the activity around her picked up, and she settled in to focus on the life she was about to bring into the world. They hadn’t wanted to know the gender of the baby – Clint had wanted so badly to be surprised. _”All right,”_ she remembered teasing him. _”If it’s a boy though, we’re naming him Cooper.”_

“Come out, little hawk,” she whispered. The bodies crowded around her abdomen were talking to each other, but she was too tired to follow the thread of the conversation. Nothing mattered anymore, except seeing this baby - _their_ baby – into the light. “Time to come home and roost.”

A hand gripped her shoulder. Laura’s breath caught in her throat. The touch was different than Mary’s, the hand heavier, but still familiar. “Time to come home,” she repeated, reaching up to cover the hand with her own.

Before she could find the courage to look for herself, an angry cry split the air. “It’s a boy!” somebody exclaimed as Laura’s doctor lifted a red, squalling infant into the air.

The hand at Laura’s shoulder vanished. A figure clad in the same shapeless surgical gear as everyone else in the room moved forward, after a moment taking the baby in its arms. “Is he okay?” she asked, reaching weakly towards her son.

The gowned and masked figure turned to face her, gently rocking the baby in its arms. Eyes she’d begun to believe she’d never see again met hers. “He’s perfect,” her husband said, his voice only partly muffled by the cloth covering his nose and mouth. “Oh God Laura, he’s perfect.”  
********************************************  
 _So close your eyes on Hushabye Mountain  
Wave goodbye to cares of the day  
And watch your boat from Hushabye Mountain  
Sail far away from Lullaby Bay._

The music wrapped around Laura as she slept, filling her senses with warmth and safety, home and _Clint…_ Her hands closed reflexively on soft, familiar flannel wrapped around her shoulders. _Wait…_

Clint had held onto very few things from his childhood. The largest was a purple flannel blanket the fortune teller in the circus had given him when he was a boy. _”I had the flu,”_ he’d told her when she’d asked about it. _”Bad enough that if Anya hadn’t agreed to look after me, they would have left me behind.”_ The unspoken admission was that abandonment would have equaled death under the circumstances.

Anya had let Clint keep the blanket she’d used to cover him during his illness. Somehow he’d held onto it, from that day to this. Laura pressed the fabric to her nose and softly inhaled her husband’s scent.

“I had Coulson bring it from the apartment.” Clint was seated on the wide window ledge – more shadow than substance in the darkened room. A shapeless bundle was cradled in his arms; their baby…their _son_ …peacefully sleeping. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want company in there.” She could see his smile, even in the darkness. “That bed’s awful small, even for us.”

Memory was slowly coming back to her as her brain awoke to the truth of him. “In the operating room..?”

Nodding, Clint got carefully to his feet and came to sit in the chair next to her bed. “We came straight to the hospital from the base. I don’t think I’ve slept since we left Somali airspace.” He was close enough now that Laura could see the evidence of healing cuts and bruises. Something of her reaction must have showed on his face. “I’m alive,” he said gently, reaching out to touch her arm with his free hand. “I’m here. Try not to think about the rest.”

The baby shifted in the crook of his arm, making a soft, contented sigh. “Hello baby hawk,” she whispered, reaching for the boy. Clint shifted, bringing him closer, and suddenly the magnitude of everything that had happened over the last handful of weeks, the fear and the pain abruptly resolved into everything she ever wanted for himself, came crashing in on her.

Clint swore softly as she began to cry, moving smoothly from the chair to sit even closer to her on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, kissing her hair, and the grief in his voice made her cry all the harder. “God Laura, I’m such an asshole. Mary told me how scared you were when they told you the baby was in distress. I should have been here.”

 _You’re here now,_ Laura thought, clutching at his thigh and curling into him as close as she could. “It’s okay,” she managed softly. “It’s okay…it’s okay…it’s okay…”

“Shh,” he murmured, stroking her hair again. “Try to sleep. I’ve got first watch. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

_A gentle breeze from Hushabye Mountain…  
Softly blows o’er Lullaby Bay…  
It fills the sails of boats that are waiting…  
Waiting to sail your worries away…_


End file.
